Winchester A5 scope with Broad Arrow mark

[Roger Payne]

Sparkbrook - done!
I've heard from the machinist & hope to have the Whitehead mounts within about a couple of weeks or so. I'll keep people posted.

[Roger Payne]

Well, it was four weeks in the end, not two, but I now have a small supply of faithful copy Whitehead Brothers mount bases for the Winchester A5/SMLE combination. They are finished & in the white, but people will still need to drill & tap the 4 BA holes in the rifle body, the rear sight protector, & the flat angle iron plates (the latter to locate the dovetail blocks). I'll be selling them for 250 GBP a set. Anyone interested please give me a shout.

[Surpmil]

There is a guy in the US and I’m still trying to get in touch with him too.
Roger I need to touch base with you re the Mounts

The A5s are quite common on eBay. The tubes themselves probably can't be exported without permits due to ITAR /US Dept. of State regulations, but the mounts possibly can.
For example

[Roger Payne]

Considering only 907 were procured for the British military in WW1 it surprises me just how often (relatively speaking) broad arrow marked examples turn up.

[Promo]

Considering only 907 were procured for the British military in WW1 it surprises me just how often (relatively speaking) broad arrow marked examples turn up.

May we assume - based on this - the mount compared to the public opinion on being quite an odd construction did pretty well in the field and many made it back? Or on the counterpart may we assume that it was so poor, not many made it into the field and most were kept for training within the UK and therefore many survived?

[Roger Payne]

Well, according to TBS it was fielded & well thought of by the men, although I don't know from where IDS solicited this information. I have a suspicion, but have not a shred of evidence to back it up, that those bearing a rifle serial were mated to a rifle & issued straight away, & those bearing the broad arrow & Enfield examiner's mark, may have been put into store.

[Nigel]

By all accounts the Canadians seemed to rate them and retro-fitted them to Ross Rifles in the field so they can't have been that bad.

[Surpmil]

The defects compared to a shorter, more robust and better sealed tube are obvious to all of us no doubt. The field of view was not large either, though the nominal 5x magnification put it up with the Warner & Swasey in that department. The tiny lenses meant light gathering was poor. Compared to the Aldis or anything German it was a bad joke, but the Aldis never got the mounts it deserved.

On the plus side it was easy to fit and adjust "in the field", and could be mounted overbore on simple, commercial bases. The light weight and recoiling tube/mounts allowed it to be slid forward on the Ross at least, so that charger loading was possible. Shock to the mounts was obviously much less than with rigid mounts which tended to shoot themselves loose, a race to the workshops the Purdey design no doubt won hands down.

On the down side the A5/B4 would need to be pulled back after every shot, unless some soldiers perhaps got wise to the idea of using the same large rubber bands that were used to hold the Warner & Swasey scopes from flopping around to bring the A5s back into battery after each shot. No photos of that known to me, just a guess of what might have been done. Probably quite a few were glad enough to have the scope slide well away from their eyes as the rifle recoiled!

As one Canadian sniper pointed out in his book, the scope held up surprisingly well and many a ---- was last seen alive through one.

The finely graduated adjustments were better than most, but as the above sniper pointed out, the scales should have been "zero-able".

The best point of all must have been the fact that Canadian battalions and the Department of Militia & Defence, could order what they needed and have it shipped from the USA promptly without going through the tortuous ways of the "War Office ink slingers", as Fuller called them.

The survival rate is attributable to the fact that they were easy to mount and dismount, mounts and bases were carried by the likes of Parker Hale for decades after the war, they could be fitted to all sorts of calibers, even .22s and the adjustments and scales used as found. Almost a DIY job for the impecunious post-war marksman, unlike the PPCo. and Aldis which required the very expensive services of a gunsmith to make much use of.